Low Resolution OCR for Portable Devices to Assist the Visually Impaired

描述（由申请人提供）：CVISION Technologies Inc.提出了新的光学字符识别（OCR）算法的发展，以提高视障人士的独立性，改善他们的日常生活。该项目将产生OCR软件，允许使用数码相机，包括手机相机，阅读文件，街道标志和其他文本。然后，可以使用文本到语音技术将文本读回给用户，或者发送到计算机以显示或以清晰的大小打印。在这两种模式中，该软件将给予视障用户更大的独立性，例如，旅行或签署法律的表格，而不需要专门的设备或其他人的帮助。该研究将专门解决低分辨率媒体（如数字视频或数码相机图像）中文本的准确OCR问题。来自这些设备的图像中的低分辨率文本给当前的OCR技术带来了很大的困难。这项工作的核心创新是开发了一种自下而上的OCR方法，而无需首先将图像阈值化为黑色和白色（即文本和背景）。这与传统的OCR系统相反，传统的OCR系统依赖于阈值的存在来将文本与背景分离，然后应用自上而下的方法。自上而下的方法将图像中的文本分解为越来越小的单元（段落，行，单词等），下至人物层面。当采样分辨率是拓扑保持的（通常高于约200 dpi）时，这很有效。所提出的自下而上的方法以相反的方式工作，首先识别文本的最小单元，然后建立越来越大的单元。模糊的，欠采样的字母之间的模糊边界是典型的低分辨率捕获的文本，可以有效地处理放松阈值的灰度图像的需要，其次是自底向上的方法，而他们导致传统的OCR算法失败。这种方法的另一个好处是它不需要校准的扫描系统（例如均匀照明、水平文本）来成功操作。这将进一步提高CVISION系统对手机和其他非校准源捕获的图像中文本的准确性。公共卫生相关性：拟议项目与公共卫生的相关性在于其赋予视障者更大程度独立生活的权利的价值。例如，想象一下，能够用普通手机摄像头拍摄一张视障人士难以辨认的公寓租赁合同的照片，使用本项目开发的软件对合同的图像进行OCR，然后让手机通过手机的扬声器读取合同。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): CVISION Technologies Inc. proposes the development of novel optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms for increasing the independence of visually impaired people and improving their day-to-day life. The project will result in OCR software that will allow for using digital cameras, including cell phone cameras, to read documents, street signs, and other text. The text can then be read back to the user using text-to-speech technology, or sent to a computer for display or printing at a legible size. In either mode, the software will grant the visually impaired user greater independence while, for example, traveling or signing legal forms, without the need for specialized equipment or the assistance of other people. The research will specifically address the problem of accurate OCR for text in low resolution media such as digital video or digital camera images. The low resolution text in images from these devices gives current OCR technology a great deal of difficulty. The central innovation in this work is the development of a bottom-up approach to OCR without first thresholding the image into black & white (i.e. text and background). This is in contrast to conventional OCR systems, which depend upon the existence of a threshold to separate the text from the background, and then apply a top-down approach. The top-down approach breaks down the text in the image into increasingly smaller units (paragraph, line, word etc.), down to the glyph (character) level. This works well when the sampling resolution is topology-preserving, usually higher than about 200 dpi. The proposed bottom-up approach works in the opposite fashion, identifying the smallest units of the text first and building up to larger and larger units. The vague borders between blurred, undersampled letters that are typical of low resolution captured text can be effectively handled by relaxing the need for thresholding the grayscale image followed by the bottom-up approach, whereas they cause conventional OCR algorithms to fail. Another benefit of this method is that it does not require a calibrated scanning system (e.g. uniform lighting, horizontal text) to operate successfully. This will further increase the accuracy of the CVISION system for text in images captured by cell phone and other non-calibrated sources. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed project's relevance to public health is its value to empower the visually impaired to live their lives with a greater deal of independence. For example, imagine being able to take a photograph of an apartment leasing contract that is illegible to a visually impaired person with an ordinary cell phone camera, using the software developed in this project to perform OCR on the image of the contract, and then having the cell phone read the contract with the phone's speaker.